Analyst warns of thousands of potentially illegal GA ballots

Let's talk about a story that's garnering some attention. Investigative reporter Johnny Edwards at the Center Square has been digging into this one. We understand an analyst, Johnny, is warning that vulnerabilities in Georgia's voting system could allow for tens of thousands of illegal votes. How does this work? And I understand you're working on some new details here. What can you share? Right. Hey, Ariel, this is a rather a toxic topic to talk about in Georgia, obviously, because of what happened in 2020 with Donald Trump and his actions and behavior. But yeah, Mark Davis, who is a longtime data analyst doing election files work for 40 years, has been going to some public meetings, including the state election board, warning state officials and state lawmakers that there could be possibly tens of thousands of people voting illegally, not only in past elections, but also in the election that's going on right now. You know, that's the implication. And the way this would work is it's people who are registered to vote somewhere in a certain county and then move either to another county or out of state. And then when the election comes around, they've missed the deadline to re-register. So they go ahead and vote anyway in the county where they were registered. And that's against the law. That's not only a misdemeanor, it's a potential felony. Johnny, this is interesting, especially, I mean, yes, it is, like you said, a topic that's generated a lot of controversy. and it has been something that we continue to see new developments in here in Georgia. I'm curious. So they're warning about these vulnerabilities in the election system. And this is something that I know has been a topic of conversation even for our state board of election. How do we prevent this? Or what do you think the conversation is around prevention? Right. Well, Mark Davis is not suggesting that we should try to prosecute tens of thousands of people. I mean, arguably, a lot of people may just be doing this innocently and not even realize that it's illegal. But what he's calling for is a system that's already been adopted in Arkansas that they started last year, where national change of address registry information, that's people that file a request with the post office to have their mail forwarded. People who've done that would be flagged when they go to the polls, and a poll worker would see that on their screen and know to ask them, you know, sir or madam, where are you actually living right now? What is your actual address? And if they disclose, well, it's not the address I'm registered at now. I just didn't have time to re-register and I just wanted to vote. They could then transfer their registration to the correct Georgia County and then, you know, cast a ballot anyway. Right now, there's really no mechanism for that. Johnny, I'm curious, has the Secretary of State or any other elections officials weighed in on this? Oh, yes. I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger about this last week. He was He was very dismissive of Mark Davis. He called his data not factually based and pretty much cast aspersions on his credibility. But he blamed federal law. He blamed the National Voter Registration Act, which sets parameters on when the Secretary of State's office can purge voters. I mean, they have a system to find out people that have asked to have their mail forwarded and are maybe living somewhere else. It's a system called ERIC shared with, I believe, 26 other states. But they are limited in how often they can purge voters that they think have moved. They have to get confirmation from them in writing. If they don't respond, they have to give a certain amount of time. I mean, they can't do any purges, any systematic purges, you know, within 90 days of a federal primary or federal election. And that pretty much means they can't do this at all during a presidential election year. So on the one hand, Raffensperger is acknowledging there's a problem, but he's also dismissing Mark Davis's data. And I'm trying to find out right now if they've ever really taken a look at Davis's data, if they've ever really tried to. I know Davis has sent them his data many times over the years, including in 2020. I'm not sure if they've ever really looked at it closely to see if their numbers match his numbers for what the level of residency violations might be. I would be curious, Johnny, for sure, to understand what that looks like. As kind of a final question to you here, I know that you're working on a development in this story and people can read it on the Center Square and you're hoping to have that published soon. If you could give us a teaser of some of the questions you're asking or what you're hoping to look at, go for it. Well, it's that question I just asked. I'm trying to determine if they ever really took a look at it. What I'm focusing on for my next story is Mark Davis, after the 2020 election, he teamed up with an ex-FBI agent named Derek Somerville, and they set out to try and challenge voters who they believed had residency issues. They believed that a little over 39,000 people might have voted illegally in the 2020 election. They ended up getting sued by Fair Fight, the group founded by Stacey Abrams, and it was a long, dragged-out, messy lawsuit. But in the course of that lawsuit, his data was pressure tested to some extent. They ended up prevailing in that lawsuit, and the judge had pretty nice things to say about Davis and Somerville's methodology. So I'm taking a look at that case and what it might mean for what he's saying now and Mr. Raffensperger's kind of dismissal of him, saying it's not factually based. It appears it is factually based. It may not be completely what he says. It may not be. For example, he says he's predicting 31,000 people could vote with residency violations in this ongoing election. It's possible it could be a fraction of that, maybe half of that or maybe 75 percent of that. You really have to you have to investigate these things one at a time if you really wanted to prove it. And that's the difficulty of it. So that's why Davis is not saying let's go out there and do this dragnet sweep. he's saying what he's trying to do is prevent it from happening because it does compromise the integrity of an election if you've got people voting ballots that aren't theirs they're voting for sheriffs and city councils and on referendums and school boards who they shouldn't be voting in yeah that makes sense because it's it's not necessarily as nefarious as say a fraud that you're actively committing potentially it's just kind of a bureaucratic oversight in the sense that maybe this issue no longer affects you, but now you have the opportunity to make your voice heard on it, but you no longer live in the area where this issue applies to. So definitely something to look into. Johnny, as always, I appreciate our conversation and I look forward to reading the update as you're working on it for the Center Square. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Ariel. Appreciate you.